News From Tasmania

The Tasmanian Committee

Tasmania

Recent amendments to the Anti-Discrimination Act 1998 (Tas) mean that Tasmania has some of the toughest anti-discrimination legislation in Australia. The amendments extend the existing protection from humiliating, intimidating, ridiculing, offending or insulting conduct to the grounds of race, age, disability, sexual orientation and lawful sexual conduct. The amendments were welcomed by the Tasmanian

Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Robin Banks who wrote that the amendments would ‘provide greater scope to address bullying-type behaviour when it is linked to these personal characteristics’. Other amendments introduced will see the extension of legal protections on the grounds of gender identity and intersex status and religious schools able to apply to the Commissioner for an exemption allowing them to preferentially admit a student of that school’s religion.